Archive for May, 2016

New Nutrition Facts Label, Now Final, Targets Sugar

May 21, 2016 — At the PHA Summit yesterday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced that the new nutrition facts label is now final, putting added sugar in the crosshairs for consumers who are paying attention. FDA notes eight changes to the label, but the real action has been focused on sugar all along. Companies have up to three years to make […]

No More Invisible and Silent Obesity

May 20, 2016 — At the fifth summit of the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) yesterday, obesity was neither invisible nor silent. The meeting opened with a panel of three people living with obesity — Kesha Calicutt, Patty Nece, and Scott Kahan — bringing their life experiences with this condition into focus for hundreds of public health activists from all over […]

Building Partnerships That Work Against Obesity

May 19, 2016 — No doubt about it, the current environment is a challenging one for building partnerships in every sector of American life. Obesity, health, and food policy are no exceptions. Yet, five years of work by the Partnership for a Healthier America has built partnerships and delivered some of the most notable successes of First Lady Michelle […]

Better Obesity Care: If You Build It, Will They Come?

May 18, 2016 — Two recent analyses illustrate a core problem that confronts professionals who devote their careers to developing and delivering better obesity care. So many barriers stand in the way of access to obesity care that people are slow to use new options as they become available. In Obesity Science and Practice, Shumin Zhang and colleagues describe a very […]

New EEOC Regs: A Fork in the Road to Employee Wellness

May 17, 2016 — New EEOC regs issued yesterday mark an important fork in the road to employee wellness. The regulations provide clarity for employers who want to impose penalties on people with chronic diseases in their wellness programs. Reactions to these rules could hardly be more diverse. You can find people who think employers should have an even bigger stick to wield in their […]

Another Ding for the Body Mass Index

May 16, 2016 — A study published by JAMA about the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and mortality puts another ding in the already dubious practice of using BMI by itself as a measure of health. And along the way, the research was twisted into some pretty bad headlines. The study examined the relationship between body mass and all-cause […]

Serious about Scientific Integrity?

May 15, 2016 — Scientific integrity results from a process of critical thinking and peer review. And every day we see that process unfold, often in ways that inspire confidence. Sometimes events leave us scratching our heads. Such is the case of an analysis published in the Journal of Hypertension more than two years ago. Based upon a meta-analysis, Cesare Cuspidi and […]

Early Warning: Strokes Rising in Young Adults

May 14, 2016 — The rate of hospitalization for strokes in young people is rising at a time when the rates on older people is on the decline. This observation, from two new studies in the Journal of the American Heart Association this week, should serve as an early warning. Stroke is just one of a myriad of chronic […]

Will FDA Save Us from Unhealthy and Unnatural Food?

May 13, 2016 — If you want a glimpse of how people feel about natural and unnatural food, just browse through many thousands of comments that FDA recently received on the matter. And this is just a prelude. The agency hasn’t proposed any rules yet. It hasn’t even decided if it will. FDA just asked for comments on putting the word “natural” on food […]

Lessons of the Biggest Loser: From Science to Nonsense

May 12, 2016 — The study published last week on metabolic adaptation in participants from the Biggest Loser reality show has captured the imagination of both the public and the media. The results are not pretty. Some elegant science with a simple message – human metabolism resists an extreme weight loss scenario – has been twisted in some disturbing ways. An optimistic […]